History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Vol. 1-3). Dubnow Simon

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СКАЧАТЬ unrest, lasted six months. The flame of rebellion seized the whole of the Ukraina, as well as Volhynia and Podolia. Bands composed of Cossacks and Russian peasants led by Khmelnitzki's accomplices, savage Zaporozhian Cossacks, dispersed in all directions, and began to exterminate Poles and Jews. To quote a Russian historian:

      Killing was accompanied by barbarous tortures; the victims were flayed alive, split asunder, clubbed to death, roasted on coals, or scalded with boiling water. Even infants at the breast were not spared. The most terrible cruelty, however, was shown towards the Jews. They were destined to utter annihilation, and the slightest pity shown to them was looked upon as treason. Scrolls of the Law were taken out of the synagogues by the Cossacks, who danced on them while drinking whiskey. After this Jews were laid down upon them, and butchered without mercy. Thousands of Jewish infants were thrown into wells, or buried alive.

      Contemporary Jewish chroniclers add that these human beasts purposely refrained from finishing their victims, so as to be able to torture them longer. They cut off their hands and feet, split the children asunder, "fish-like," or roasted them on fire. They opened the bowels of women, inserted live cats, and then sewed up the wounds. The unbridled bestiality of intoxicated savages found expression in these frightful tortures, of which even the Tatars were incapable.

      Particularly tragic was the fate of those Jews who, in the hope of greater safety, had fled from the villages and townlets to the fortified cities. Having learned that several thousand Jews had taken refuge in the town of Niemirov in Podolia, Khmelnitzki dispatched thither a detachment of Cossacks under the command of the Zaporozhian Gania. Finding it difficult to take the city by storm, the Cossacks resorted to a trick. They drew nigh to Niemirov, carrying aloft the Polish banners and requesting admission into the city. The Jews, fooled into believing that it was a Polish army that had come to their rescue, opened the gates (Sivan 20 = June 10, 1648). The Cossacks, in conjunction with the local Russian inhabitants, fell upon the Jews and massacred them; the women and girls were violated. The Rabbi and Rosh-Yeshibah of Niemirov, Jehiel Michael ben Eliezer, hid himself in the cemetery with his mother, hoping in this wise at least to be buried after death. There he was seized by one of the rioters, a shoemaker, who began to club him. His aged mother begged the murderer to kill her instead of her son, but the inhuman shoemaker killed first the rabbi and then the aged woman.

      The young Jewish women were frequently allowed to live, the Cossacks and peasants forcing them into baptism and taking them for wives. One beautiful Jewish girl who had been kidnaped for this purpose by a Cossack managed to convince him that she was able to throw a spell over bullets. She asked him to shoot at her, so as to prove to him that the bullet would glide off without causing her any injury. The Cossack discharged his gun, and the girl fell down, mortally wounded, yet happy in the knowledge that she was saved from a worse fate. Another Jewish girl, whom a Cossack was on the point of marrying, threw herself from the bridge into the water, while the wedding procession was marching to the church. Altogether about six thousand Jews perished in the city of Niemirov.

      Those who escaped death fled to the fortified Podolian town of Tulchyn. Here an even more terrible tragedy was enacted. A large horde of Cossacks and peasants laid siege to the fortress, which contained several hundred Poles and some fifteen hundred Jews. The Poles and Jews took an oath not to betray one another and to defend the city to their last breath. The Jews, stationed on the walls of the fortress, shot at the besiegers, keeping them off from the city. After a long and unsuccessful siege the Cossacks conceived a treacherous plan. They informed the Poles of Tulchyn that they were aiming solely at the Jews, and, as soon as the latter were delivered into their hands, they would leave the Poles in peace. The Polish pans, headed by Count Chetvertinski, forgot their oath, and decided to sacrifice their Jewish allies to secure their own safety. When the Jews discovered this treacherous intention, they immediately resolved to dispose of the Poles, whom they excelled in numbers. But the Rosh-Yeshibah of Tulchyn, Rabbi Aaron, implored them not to touch the pans, on the ground that such action might draw upon the Jews all over the Empire the hatred of the Polish population. "Let us rather perish," he exclaimed, "as did our brethren in Niemirov, and let us not endanger the lives of our brethren in all the places of their dispersion." The Jews yielded. They turned over all their property to Chetvertinski, asking him to offer it to the Cossacks as a ransom for their lives.

      After entering the city, the Cossacks first took possession of the property of the Jews, and then drove them together into a garden, where they put up a banner and declared, "Let those who are willing to accept baptism station themselves under this banner, and we will spare their lives." The rabbis exhorted the people to accept martyrdom for the sake of their religion and their people. Not a single Jew was willing to become a traitor, and fifteen hundred victims were murdered in a most barbarous fashion. Nor did the perfidious Poles escape their fate. Another detachment of Cossacks, which entered Tulchyn later, slew all the Catholics, among them Count Chetvertinski. Treachery avenged treachery.

      From Podolia the rebel bands penetrated into Volhynia. Here the massacres continued in the course of the whole summer and autumn of 1648. In the town of Polonnoye ten thousand Jews met their death at the hands of the Cossacks, or were taken captive by the Tatars. Among the victims was the Cabalist Samson of Ostropol, who was greatly revered by the people. This Cabalist, and three hundred pious fellow-Jews who followed him, put on their funeral garments, the shrouds and prayer shawls, and offered up fervent prayers in the synagogue, awaiting death in the sacred place, where the murderers subsequently killed them one by one. Similar massacres took place in Zaslav, Ostrog, Constantinov, Narol, Kremenetz, Bar, and many other cities. The Ukraina as well as Volhynia and Podolia were turned into one big slaughter-house.

      The Polish troops, particularly those under the brave command of Count Jeremiah Vishniovetzki, succeeded in subduing the Cossacks and peasants in several places, annihilating some of their bands with the same cruelty that the Cossacks had displayed towards the Poles and the Jews. The Jews fled to these troops for their safety, and they were welcomed by Vishniovetzki, who admitted the unfortunates into the baggage train, and, to use the expression of a Jewish chronicler, took care of them "as a father of his children." After the catastrophe of Niemirov he entered the city with his army, and executed the local rioters who had participated in the murder of the Jewish inhabitants. However, standing all alone, he was unable to extinguish the flame of the Cossack rebellion. For the commanders-in-chief of the Polish army did not display the proper energy at this critical moment, and Khmelnitzki was right in dubbing them contemptuously "featherbeds," "youngsters," and "Latins" ("bookworms").

      From the Ukraina bands of rebellious peasants, or haidamacks, penetrated into the nearest towns of White Russia and Lithuania. From Chernigov and Starodub, where the Jewish inhabitants had been exterminated, the murderers moved towards the city of Homel (July or August). A contemporary gives the following description of the Homel massacre:

The rebels managed to bribe the head of the city, who delivered the Jews into their hands. The Greeks [Yevanim, i.e. the Greek Orthodox Russians] surrounded them with drawn swords, and with daggers and spears, exclaiming: "Why do you believe in your God, who has no pity on His suffering people, and does not save it from our hands? Reject your God, and you shall be masters! But if you will cling to the faith of your fathers, you shall all perish in the same way as your brethren in the Ukraina, in Pokutye,128 and Lithuania perished at our hands." Thereupon Rabbi Eliezer, our teacher, the president of the [rabbinical] court, exclaimed: "Brethren, remember the death of our fellow-Jews, who perished to sanctify the name of our God! Let us too stretch forth our necks to the sword of the enemy; look at me and act as I do!" Immediately thousands of Jews renounced their lives, despised this world, and hallowed the name of God. The Rosh-Yeshibah was the first to offer up his body as a burnt-offering. Young and old, boys and girls saw the tortures, sufferings, and wounds of the teacher, who did not cease exhorting them to accept martyrdom in the name of Him who had called into being the generations of mortals. As one man they all exclaimed: "Let us forgive one another our mutual insults. Let us offer up our souls to God and our bodies to the wild waves, to our enemies, the offspring of the Greeks!" СКАЧАТЬ